Date: 1744

"Like the proud Eastern [Nebuchadnezzar], struck by Providence, / What, though our passions are run mad, and stoop, / With low terrestrial appetite, to graze / On trash, on toys, dethroned from high desire?"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Yet still, through their disgrace [the passions'], no feeble ray / Of greatness shines, and tells us whence they fell: / But these (like that fallen monarch [Adam] when reclaim'd) / When Reason moderates the rein aright, / Shall re-ascend, remount their former sphere, / Where once they soar'd il...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Whence, then, those thoughts? those towering thoughts that flew / Such monstrous heights?"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"In Lust's dominion, and in Passion's storm, / Truth's system broken, scatter'd fragments lay: / (As light in chaos, glimmering through the gloom)."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

""Reason with Inclination why at war? / Why sense of guilt? Why Conscience up in arms?"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"The thorns shoot up! What thorns in every thought! / Why sense of better? It embitters worse."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Ye towering hopes, abortive energies! / That toss and struggle in my lying breast, / To scale the skies, and build presumptions there, / As I were heir of an eternity."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Sense! take the rein; blind Passion! drive us on; / And, Ignorance! befriend us on our way; / Ye new, but truest patrons of our peace! Yes; give the Pulse full empire; live the Brute, / Since as the Brute we die."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"This all-pervading, this all-conscious soul, / This particle of energy Divine, / Which travels Nature, flies from star to star, / And visits gods, and emulates their powers, / For ever is extinguish'd"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Beneath what baleful planet, in what hour / Of desperation, by what Fury's aid, / In what infernal posture of the soul, / All hell invited, and all hell in joy / At such a birth, a birth so near of kin, / Did thy foul fancy whelp so black a scheme / Of hopes abortive, faculties half-blown, / And...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)